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Thursday, October 16, 2014

Countering Terrorblade (Dota 2 v6.82b)

So Terrorblade (TB) has hit the Dota 2 scene, and suddenly he's a pick/ban nearly every game. In pubs, he's especially hard to deal with, due to the lack of team coordination (except sub-3k MMR, where apparently Terrorblade players feed very hard).

How do you deal with Terrorblade?

DO NOT give the enemy TB safe farm for 20 mins!

DO NOT try to out-carry him! He is effective both mid and late game once he's got his core.

Earthshaker to use his illusions against him (especially if he goes Manta, which is currently a popular item on TB).

Silences: TB relies on Sunder to stay alive, the use of low-cooldown illusions, and Manta. Helps if you can delay his use of illusions or Sunder with Doom or Silences.

Kiting: Sunder has a short range, and the rest of TB is all about auto-attacks. If you can play keep-away-and-nuke, he doesn't last long.

Weaver is good for this, especially since Time Lapse vs. Sunder = fight reset.

Use his illusions against him: Dark Seer or Shadow Demon work well. Copies of TB, with his high damage, can destroy him.

Pure Damage: Outworld Destroyer, Enchantress, Silencer (orb attacks)

Finding the Real Terrorblade: TB usually goes Power Treads, to mitigate his low hp, so the real TB will attack slightly faster than his illusions, since the latter don't benefit from the attack speed increase.

Counter him by pushing early and taking map control while preventing trades
He gets countered by strong early team fight lineups + one hero
capable of stopping pushes (timber, sand king, kunkka, lina, leshrac etc
etc) since his team will often be starved early.Counter him by picking him off whenever he tries to find farm mid game (pre-manta)
He gets countered by pick off oriented lineups (riki, slark, QW
orchid rush invoker, clinkz etc); controlling his jungle mid game will
starve him significantly.Counter him by having more scaling cores, while using supports that hard-counter him
He gets countered by ultra-late line ups combined with
lion/enchant/sd, support picks capable of neutering most of his farm
advantage.Counter him by laning aggressively
TB is paper and doesn't fare well in tri v tri lanes. His only call
to fame is being able to dodge nightmares with illusion transfer and
projectile stuns by committing his cast of Meta, otherwise laning
aggressively against him and controlling his jungle will slow down his
start significantly.Counter him with with heroes that hit structures faster
All things even, TB is never going to win a race against specific
heroes such as Meepo. Speaking of Meepo, this is the true king of
split-pushing, the bane of TB.Counter him with specific picks that easily shut down his contribution
He gets countered in general by % damage like static field and
midnight pulse because of interaction with damage amplification on
illusions.
He gets countered by picks like Pugna which pushes well early and can one shot his illusions late.
In a nut shell, TB is actually very similar to Meepo. Very strong in
the right hands, but easily countered with the correct lineup/playstyle.
Meepo is hardly what one would call broken competitively, yet people
don't accord TB a similar level of respect ban/pick wise and inevitably
fail against him.